I had a 30 minute screening call with a recruiter from HR. He was well prepared, asked on point questions regarding my CV and motivations, and at the end of the call immediately told me that my background was sufficient, and I'd be invited to the next round with my Hiring Manager; I really appreciated that. I spoke to the Hiring Manager a few days later, who is holding a leading position in the company. He was friendly, and nice to talk to. His questions were fine, asking about my experiences and how I would tackle X problem. I did find him less on point than the recruiter, it was more a casual exchange of experiences in general. From that I got the sense that this stage was to get to know each other more, maybe get a first impression on experiences. I already knew that there was going to be a case at the next level, so I was fine with a more casual approach. But I do have to say that unlike the HR recruiter, in this conversation with the Hiring Manager, the goal of the meeting was not very clear to me, so I was uncertain what to highlight. After that, my experience unfortunately was very unsatisfactory. I did not hear back for a week, at which point I asked HR when feedback would be given. I got a reply, a sorry and an ETA of 2 days. After 3 days, I reached out again, at which point the email address of the recruiter no longer existed. I would think the company might feel a bit uncomfortable about the fact that an applicant found out about that on their own, and the company didn't reach out proactively. I did hear however, that the Talent teams are severely overworked. So I had to follow up with the Hiring Manager on LinkedIn, asking when feedback would be possible, to which I got an answer (and I was grateful for the honesty) that they don't know yet, but no ETA when I would get feedback, and what exactly is needed on their end to make an informed decision. The message ended that my case would be forwarded to another recruiter, who would get in touch. To this day, no one got back to me. This was 4 weeks ago. The fact that they just ghosted me without so much as a standard rejection email does not sit well with me. It makes them look unappreciative of peoples effort, and unprofessional. I do not mind if I wasn't the right fit, but I would have liked a reasoning to be able to learn from this experience.
